


To love (is to tremble sometimes)

by Florchis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Introspection, Motherhood, complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29276277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/pseuds/Florchis
Summary: When Daisy asked May to consider motherhood together, reluctance was to be expected. But it doesn't all come from what Daisy would have expected.
Relationships: Melinda May/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	To love (is to tremble sometimes)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [26stars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/gifts).



> Hello everyone, the Valentine gifts keep on coming!
> 
> Written for the prompt: “and I had a feeling so peculiar/this pain wouldn’t be for evermore”.  
> Title comes from "Semilla en la tierra" by Carlos Chaouen, which is a gloriously angsty song.

The silence of Daisy’s absence in the house is deafening. 

May stirs the tea on her mug pretending she doesn’t notice it and fails spectacularly. By the time she takes the mug to her lips, the tea has gone cold, and she pushes it apart in disgust. 

Like she needed cold tea on top of everything else.

She looks at her phone lying screen down on the table, like she has been doing regularly every three or four minutes for the last hour. She knows that with only one phone call Daisy could be back, that she is the one who asked for space, but still she refrains herself. It would be cruel to ask her wife to come back when she is still a mess.

May takes back the mug only to have something to occupy her hands and watches her reflection on the dark surface of the liquid. Despite the image not being clear as a mirror, she sees a lot of things: the devastating signals of insomnia, the toll age has taken on her. People like to tell her that she looks ‘timeless’, ‘not a day older than thirty’, Jemma even said once, but May knows better: she feels her age in every movement that is harder than it used to be, on every creak of her articulations on humid days, on every time she closes her eyes and thinks ‘I can’t deal with this’, on every scar that has left her heart tender and bleeding.

When Daisy asked her- full of hope and dreams as she always is- if she was willing to consider motherhood with her, she was ready for May to be reluctant. But Daisy thought, May is sure, that the reluctance was going to be trauma-induced, and that talking things through and reassurance and maybe a bit of professional support would gently push May to the desired answer. She was not wrong: Katya will forever be an open wound on May’s soul and getting to consider herself capable of nurturing and loving again would have been a hard sell for May not that long ago.

But Skye happened, and May rediscovered that her hands were not only meant to kill but could be used to teach and to hold. But Daisy happened and May remembered that she didn’t suffer through her trauma because she didn’t care but because she cared too much, and there were better ways to redirect that intensity of feelings than into loathing herself.

But besides the dream of motherhood that broke and splintered in May’s past, there is no denying the fact that she is considerably older than Daisy and worse for wear. There is trauma in her past, there are scars and anger, and there is also tiredness in her bones.

It’s hard to think how to make all that compatible with motherhood. She has held and cooed and babysat the newborns of the rest of the team, and despite how much she loves them as if they were her own, she can not imagine herself with one that is actually hers. She hates the stereotype of the broken woman who has to give up motherhood and lose her entire femininity in the process, but she also hates that people would expect her to not be affected by everything that has happened.

Except for Daisy. Daisy, who has trauma of her own and it’s still the kindest, most compassionate person May has ever known. Daisy, who loves her for who she is and embraces May’s ghosts as part of who she is instead of being in constant war with them. Daisy, who married her with bright eyes full of love and wants to have a family with her, of all people. 

May sighs and gets up to pour the cold tea down the drain. She has been beating herself down for hours on the subject, and she has not gotten to any conclusive decision: she wants to give Daisy this, but she feels too tired and weary to face it; she wants to love a child the way she knows she can love one, but she doubts if she has that many good years under her belt to take on that responsibility. 

The idea dawns on her while she is washing her tea mug: maybe she should have let Daisy talk more before internally panicking and asking her wife for some alone time to consider it. Maybe Daisy wasn’t talking about surrogacy or IVF; maybe- most likely, now that she is thinking about it- she was talking from her own experience. Maybe- most likely- they can find a middle ground that makes them both happy without pushing the boundaries of what May feels capable of giving.

“Daisy? Come back home. I am ready to talk about it.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of LLF Comment Project, whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
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